


Abandon All Hope (the Once in a Blue Moon Remix)

by Rosie_Rues



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-29
Updated: 2011-04-29
Packaged: 2017-10-18 19:32:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/192460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosie_Rues/pseuds/Rosie_Rues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Once in a blue moon, the damned see out of Hell. Lucifer knows it's not a blessing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Abandon All Hope (the Once in a Blue Moon Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [EllieMurasaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Trapped](https://archiveofourown.org/works/177335) by [EllieMurasaki](https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/EllieMurasaki). 



Once every three hundred years, by Hell's reckoning, the moon is blue ( _betrayer moon, the old souls call it, lifting shrivelled hands to their torn mouths_ ) and its light comes falling into the Pit, burning away the mists from the higher slopes of Abaddon. Fields of ghostly asphodel quiver under the touch of the moon, lifting star-like flowers towards the true sky, and the winds of Hell grow still.

The denizens of Hell fall silent as the light slides over them, screams dying to sighs in their throats. One by one, tortured souls and torturers, they lift their faces to the moon and look up into the world above: in grief, in yearning, in hunger. Hellhounds crouch down, tails between their legs, and the nameless things that fly above the abyss settle onto jagged rocks and fold their wings close, bowing their eyeless heads. The light shines further, through the ice where ancients souls are frozen in cages of their own tears, between the metal barbs where a righteous man hangs in agony, not quite broken yet, and down into the deepest parts of Hell. It even reaches one who knows that this too is part of the nature of Hell, for hope is what makes it a prison, rather than a new world.

Lucifer looks to heaven and tries to sneer.

Instead he finds himself gazing into the vastness of the sky. He sees the stars in all their glory, the glimmering reactions in their cores and the blazing dance of galaxies; hears, above the rustle of reeds and crackle of fires, the music of the spheres (and it seems to play in a minor key now, compared to the days when he was made of light and hope and glory); feels the cool and infinite spaces between stars, the darkness he never had a chance to walk through, bringing light, bringing glory.

It's _wrong_ and that burns through him again, just like it as he was cast down, as it has ever since. It makes him so angry, to be here when he has a purpose out there, when his Father's creation still needs him to bring order to what has become tattered and besmirched. He has a duty, and he was torn from his path, and the injustice hurts. He never deserved this.

But the moon still shines, even as his rage twists and ebbs, and the sight of the stars cuts more bitterly than the sharp, humming bars of the cage that holds him. The moon still shines, and he can't help looking up, tracing the shapes that move beyond the stars, greater and more eternal than all creation.

He hasn't seen Gabriel in many, many moons, and Raphael simply stands at the centre of the universe, bleak and still and righteous, but Michael walks the edges of existence. He's been pacing since the first time Lucifer looked up from Hell, his gaze turned away from the earth below and his steps steady and relentless. His wings are shadows now, shadows that span solar systems and drag gravity askew in his wake. He is thunder and dark matter now, his brother Michael, the moment of silence before the earth tears asunder, and Lucifer doesn't need to see his face to know that he is full of sorrow.

He remembers when Michael laughed, wings flashing like lightning over the towers of Heaven, gleeful simply because their Father had given him existence and brothers to grace it with.

All around him, the damned are silent, made mute by the chance that there is still more for them than Hell. And, no matter how much he hates and burns and rages, he too cannot keep hope away.

Very soon, the seals will break, and he will walk free. Michael will come to him then. Michael would have offered to fall instead of him, he's sure, had their Father not forbidden it, but now Michael will come and try to kill him, even though they both know Michael will never be happy without him. One of them will die, and the other will grieve and finally lose hope and so remake the world as it should always have been.

But perhaps, the vicious twist of hope makes him think, there will be a moment before the battle. Perhaps they will both lay down their swords for a moment, on the soft grass, and reach out, and Michael will call him, “Brother,” and they will embrace, two sons of the morning, under the light of the sun.

(And then Lucifer will have to kill Michael, but he doesn't think about that part.)

**Author's Note:**

> There's some debate over what exactly a blue moon is. I went with an older definition, which says that if you have four full moons in a season, instead of the standard three, the third one is known as a blue moon. They happen every 33 months, which I translated loosely to Hell-time. There was one at the end of May 2008, just after Dean went to hell.


End file.
